| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
Authors' Committee
Chair:
Andy Eggers (Gov)
Members:
Weihua An (Soc)Kevin Bartz (Stats)
Sebastian Bauhoff (HealthPol)
John Graves (HealthPol)
Justin Grimmer (Gov)
Jens Hainmueller (Gov)
Mike Kellermann (Gov)
Ellie Powell (Gov)
Gary King (Gov)
Weekly Research Workshop Sponsors
Alberto Abadie, Lee Fleming, Adam Glynn, Guido Imbens, Gary King, Kevin Quinn, Jamie Robins, Don Rubin, Chris Winship
Recent Comments
Recent Entries
- IN, NC Predictions
- New NBER working paper by James Heckman ``Econometric Causality''
- Common sense and research design
- Jamie Robins on "Estimation of Direct Effects in Different Contexts"
- FAQs about Statistical Interactions
- Predicting Pennsylvania, Updated
- Gelman's Paradox (or, The Probabilistic Backwards Reasoning Fallacy)
- Jeff Gill on "Circular Data in Political Science and How to Handle It"
- Linguistics of the Debate
- JAMA article on ghostwriting medical studies
Categories
Blogroll
Brad DeLongCognitive Daily
Complexity & Social Networks
Developing Intelligence
EconLog
The Education Wonks
Empirical Legal Studies
Free Exchange
Freakonomics
Health Care Economist
Junk Charts
Language Log
Law & Econ Prof Blog
Machine Learning (Theory)
Marginal Revolution
Mixing Memory
Mystery Pollster
New Economist
Political Arithmetik
Political Science Methods
Pure Pedantry
Science & Law Blog
Simon Jackman
Social Science++
Statistical modeling, causal inference, and social science
Archives
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
Notification
« Conference on Computational Social Science | Main | Mullainathan on How We Choose: Medicare Drug Plan Selection »
3 December 2007
Stress and birth outcomes
You might recall explanations of a gender bias at birth due to simple and sophisticated discrimination, or even infectious disease like hepatitis B. Last week’s Economist reports that in industrialized countries, the probability of getting a boy is slightly higher than getting a girl. More surprisingly, that extra chance of having a boy has been decreasing.
One new cause put forward is mother’s stress, acute or chronic, and there seems to be evidence that stressed mothers are more likely to give birth to girls. The explanation could be pathological or adaptive: the article suggests that in hard and stressful times, it makes evolutionary sense to have more girls.
I suspect that there are many omitted variables related to stress and other health behaviors. Apparently some studies find similar effects of stress using variation from natural disasters or terrorist attacks. Still, this won’t explain a pro-boy bias in developing countries (since stress should generally be higher there we would expect more girls to be born). But it’s an interesting aspect of a growing literature that takes psychological and environmental stress seriously.
Posted by Sebastian Bauhoff at December 3, 2007 12:04 PM